Upcoming Events & Workshops

Feedback on our work has proven critical to many of us involved in the arts. In this emerging age of digital photography, it is hard to find people knowledgeable in the technology and with a background and experience in the fine arts.

This workshop is part of a series of classes concentrating on the tools within Photoshop critical to Photographers. It is a great chance to explore digital photographic editing with Steve in his custom-built lab. Hands-on help and demonstrations of his use of editing tools, executed with restraint and finesse, will benefit all of your digital photography work. This class is designed to break down the steps to really understand the processes, and to work through difficult images.

Join us for a one-day in-depth exploration of Color Management theory and practice designed to get you comfortable with the concepts and architecture of color management and build practical experience methods for using profiles for monitor display and in printing. Monitor calibration and print profiles will be explained and you will have hands-on experience making both.

Give tangible physical form to your photographs and create the only lasting form of your work, fine-art prints, as beautiful hand-made renderings.

This workshop focuses exclusively on improving your fine-art digital printing in our fully-equipped Digital Lab, primarily using Epson inkjet printers. Concentration will be on inkjet printing with color pigments and black/gray ink combinations on coated and rag papers. Learn from the digital pioneer how he obtains his impressive results during four days of lectures, printing, and feedback in the studio.

Marin Photography Club would like to invite you to be a presenter at their Education Night, Monday, May 13, 2019.

Steve will discuss his exhibition of new prints from over 50 years of Space Photography is joining the current Life Form Exhibition for a mind-blowing journey from the living world close-up to the depths of space. The Space Exhibit evolved out of Steve’s longterm interest in the space program and views offered of the heavens and by spacecraft far away. The concentration on the exotic form of the living world of the Life Form work inspired this expressive look at the wonders of the very large and distant in this print exploration of photographs Steve had been gathering for years.

A two-day digital photography workshop exploring San Francisco Bay Area Lighthouses and the vistas surrounding them. We'll spend time at Pigeon Point on the San Mateo coast, the Montara Lighthouse and Hostel, Fort Point with its spectacular views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Point Bonita Lighthouse on the Marin Headlands.

This full-week photography workshop is an intense immersion into digital photography with one of its pioneers. In five days you will go from perhaps not even understanding what a RAW file is, to making well-crafted and thoughtful prints.

Since 1979 I have led winter photography workshops to Death Valley. I keep returning to this desert because there is a magic here, a quiet and vast expanse of sensual and strange earthworks, remarkable in color, resting under the soft winter light of January.

We will spend our first half day preparing for our outings. Topics covered will be optimal digital camera use in a variety of formats, file size and printing considerations. We will open files, review success, constantly going back in the field putting into practice lessons learned.

Jan 18, 2020 – Jan 21, 2020

Custom Workshop Scheduling: We have set up polls for recently requested workshops to see who might be interested and able to make some dates:

With all of our busy schedules and limited budgets, destination workshops or classes become a challenge, but many of you still have questions you need answered, or feedback on some new work. We want to remind you of our Virtual Online Consulting Program. This service allows all of you out there around the globe to consult online live with Steve on technical, aesthetic and workflow issues using Skype and your webcam.

We hope you can come by the gallery and see the original prints in the National Parks Gallery, and the Exquisite Earth exhibition with its accompanying very special Exquisite Earth Portfolio 1. We invite you to join us on a workshop, rent lab space, or just say hello and let us know what you are up to photographically and what you might like to see us offer. We value your input.

Road Trip

My Death Valley workshop always takes me through a wide range of California landscapes. Just to get there, I drive south along the coast, cut inward down HWY 101 south through the Salinas Valley, turn east along HWY 46 past the James Dean crash site and over the hills to lonely west side of Kern County and the San Joaquin.

The journey then takes me through the home of western country music, oil and cotton, Bakersfield, over the Tehatchapi with their oaks and complex railroad, past the winds farms, then drop into the Mojave desert.

No road trip ever has enough time. Every time I squeeze in a must do trip and cut out wandering, I regret it. This trip was no exception. Launching the Life Form Construction Kickstarter Project before I left created a departure squeeze, then meeting with the Viewpoint Gallery coordinator just after I returned meant. I had to get back. To my delight, the morning after the workshop was a Lunar Eclipse which I wanted to stay in Death Valley for.

It reminds me of past opportunities truncated by responsibilities elsewhere. I had to cut short a great river trip down the Colorado in the Grand Canyon and walk out from Phantom Ranch to the south rim with all of my gear. It was a double hit, I've still never been down the rest of the river, plus the heat and weight of my cameras. I use to say that was the hardest walk I had done, but then Mt. Helens climb came along in 1995.

Most of the looking around was not wandering, but the planned itinerary of my Death Valley Workshop. I realized on the trip that this was likely my 32nd. workshop in Death Valley. The number seemed unbelievable. But then again, so is the place. It may be hard for me to make photographs unrelated to what I have photographed before, but there is an endless fascination here. It often takes a long time to see through early impressions and distill what feels essential. That seems to be an ongoing process.

When I first started to photograph is Yosemite, it was with a keen awareness of Ansel Adams work there. In a sense, I wish my first exploration had been without that knowledge. It is true though that those photographs Ansel made helped inspire me to photograph. It is also not surprising to me to realize that I never showed Ansel any of my Yosemite photographs. Inspiration, homage, and striking out on our own ground, all are part of this process of evolving into our vision. Hopefully that vision reflects the heartfelt aspirations that we slowly understand and evolve. Recognizing the photographs that do speak to your own heart is probably that greatest perceptive goal we can attain. Touching others is important, but we have find a way of letting our heart speak first.

Salt-flats. Amargosa River from Dante's View. Death Valley. 2018Canon 5DSr.

Artist's Drive. Death Valley. 2018.Canon EOS 5DS R

Every time I revisit the precipice of Dante's View, I am humbled by the space and wonder within site. Looking to the north is probably over 100 miles of valley, the south likely 75. The valley floor a mile below is the endless abstraction of the salt-flats of the old lake bed and the Amargosa River. I have made scores of photographs over the years of those salt-flats, and don't need to make more. But the sensuality and abstraction continue to be irresistible. Even if photographs I've already made have pleased me, the joy of seeing it in subtly different ways continues to make me get out the camera.

My first visit to Death Valley in 1978 impressed me in many ways. The vastness was certainly part of that lasting impression. The paved roads crossing that space seemed strange, almost undulating over the rises and falls of the land, defining with an out of place little geometric imposition the wild, unruly geography of millions of years.

Dry Wash. Artist's Drive. Death Valley. 2018.Canon EOS 5DS R

Artist's Palette. Death Valley. 2018.Canon 5DSr.

I think I may have learned to photograph in Death Valley. The challenge of seeing simply amid such complexity, intuiting design, simplifying color, being seduced by winter's soft light, then being determined to rise to the challenge of bright sunlight and shows, all of these things forced me to grow.

Photography has so much to do with intention. Why do we photograph? To make things. To have an excuse to be out and about in the world. For love of technology. For the fascination of holding a moment or memory. To witness wonder. To share the remarkableness of the world around us.

It is in that wonder, that witness to the remarkable that drives me forward. I want to record what I see, and try to find voice for my heart. I want to touch others hearts. I want to cause others to care.

Those desires create a rather straight line for me. I want my color photographs to represent what I saw. I want my black and white photograph's content literal but abstract. For me, as photographs, both need to be what was there, what I saw, what seduced me into making a photograph.

Artists Palette. Death Valley. 2018.Canon 5DSr.

Entrance to Titus Canyon. Death Valley. 2018.Canon EOS 5DS R.

This photographic sojourn is a never-ending journey for me. It is the lust to wander, the drive to understand, the compulsion to feel, the drive to share and move others. These are my photographic motivations and inspirations.

Death Valley is just one place, of so many, that have touched me. As I occasionally look back over these last 40 years of work, so many memories are jogged by the photographs, and so many photographs brought to mind by the memories. It all leaves a much richer sense of my life than would otherwise still be with me. The images often make real vague images of the past. I enjoy that give and take between mind and image.

Walking out onto the salt flats is an otherworldly experience–the space, the scent of salt in the air, the delicate crunch of the salt plain.

I was playing with the salt flats and bright sun as HDR files, and exploring time-lapse. Then, of course, the moon popped up over the mountains and broke that idea off. The moon seems so perfectly round above ragged rocky mountains.

Titus Canyon is a parade of geologic wonder. I think my next workshop here will devote a whole day to this place. There is so much here that the drive through always seems rushed. It is a place you could stop every few hundred feet.

Can stone actually glow. It can in Titus Canyon.

Fleshy Hills, Zabriski Point. Death Valley. 2018.Canon EOS 5DS R.

Contrails shading Sunset sky. Pacifica. 2018.Canon 5DSr.

Any workshop ending has its own bit of sadness after forming our little workshop family. The drive home from Death Valley is about 9 hours for me, which is always challenging. But coming home the Pacific is comforting in ways it is hard to describe. Living next to the sea for almost 33 years has made a bond between the ocean and with whatever it is that is essential about Steve.

Next Field Workshop

At Stephen Johnson Photography

Most of my attention at this point is preparing for the Life Form show in March. Odering frames, cutting down matt board, getting help with the 8-ply overmatts and with assembling the frames.

Steve at the "Life Form" Display. PhotoPlus. New York City. NY. 2017.Canon 5DSr.

I am fortune to have the help of old friends, Darin Steinberg cutting near perfect matt and Carl Schwab helping with assembly. Both of there friends were once students of mine, some 30 years ago when I taught at Skyline College.

Free Stuff

We recently replaced the Epson 2400s in our lab with their new P600s and consequently have some printers to seed to photographers in need. We were also given some Epson Canvas to share. These are available for pick-up to those of you on my mailing list. Let me know of your interest. I do want to spread them out among a few people.

Featured Products

New Exquisite Earth Exhibition Catalog

Page 41

page 13

The Exquisite Earth Exhibition Catalog

As I've been on a roll on fixing bodies of work into POD books, I decided before the Exquisite Earth show could come down for new upcoming show, I wanted to create a printed record. So, now available is the 56 page 11x17 wire bound book, 5 years of work from 2005 to 2010 traveling this wondrous planet.

National Park Note cards

From "With a New Eye" Beautiful 300 line screen offset reproductions with envelopes in clear box. A great gift.

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